[Year 12 IT Apps] Paper Wins!

[Mark]

On 2 May 2014 14:43, ken price <kenjprice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Though some may argue that reading books that are a few centuries old is
> not a simple process either.
>

True, and I agree completely, but that is a linguistic problem, rather than
a media issue.
Linguistic drift can take centuries - we can read "Pride and Prejudice"
perfectly well.
But it can take a millennium for a bloke like Chaucer to become
unintelligible.

A *digital* dark age, however, can occur within mere years.

Imagine finding an 8" floppy disc labelled "Me, Lee, Marilyn and the Mob -
a memoir by J.F.Kennedy" and trying to read it.
Or a 5.25" disc - but it's saved in Wordstar format?
Or it was created on an Apple ][, or under a CP/M operating system.

How many of you could even read it if it were given to you today on a 3.5"
floppy?
What if it were saved on a PATA hard disk? Try finding a PATA port on a
modern motherboard.

One of the most-borrowed devices I loaned out at McKinnon SC was a USB 3.5"
floppy drive. (You can still get them for less than $20 on eBay. I'd grab
one for your school while you can. Advertise it. Staff will love you.)
But try looking for a *5.25"* USB floppy drive ... start here -
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1006497 (spoiler: the news is not
good)

I'm getting to the stage where I'm even converting Word .doc files to plain
text or RTF for archiving because even Microsoft may soon/eventually go the
way of Wordstar and Wordperfect (the once-undisputed *king* of word
processing)...
And if you save to the cloud - who will say your Google/Amazon/Microsoft
host won't collapse, or cancel your account and delete all of your files
tomorrow for no explicable reason?

When I archive now, I copy both  to NAS, hard disk, and DVD/Blu-ray,
because any optical disk has a finite lifespan.
And magnetic disks need to be refreshed every few years to maintain their
data integrity.

Yet my hand-written paper-based diaries from 1985 continue to freely
embarrass me to this day with no technological barrier.
Curse them, and those old days on the dairy farm when I had a paper diary,
a pen, and a lively, buxom, nubile* milk maid.

Curse them all!

Well, actually the milk maid *was* rather cute. Dammit! Why did I leave
her?
Why can't I rewind this stupid life?
Deanne! Where are you now?
(Sobs. Recovers. Stoically faces future without buxom milk maid.)

I bet even you - readrs in 2024 in the Kevork Preservatin Socit,y - are
findin that my pst is beomig hrd t read as th yars av pasd an dsk erro hap
mr oftn.

---

Mark Kelly
mark AT vceit DOT com
http://vceit.com

*Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease - Bill Maher *

* Don't be rude. "Nubile" does not mean "nude", "flexible" or other naughty
things. It means "Eligible to marry." So - nyaaa.
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